Arkansas Blog

Rasmussen poll gives edge to Cotton in U.S. Senate

A Rassmussen poll gives Tom Cotton a 45-40 edge over Sen. Mark Pryor in a recent poll with 10 percent undecided and 5 percent favoring another candidate. Questions are currently behind pay wall.

Rasmusseun has been criticized frequently for a house bias toward Republicans, notably by Nate Silver, who had a pretty good election in 2012. He found that Rasmussen overweighted Mitt Romney's performance in 2012, on average, by about 4 percent. If the typical Rasmussen bias is at work, you have essentially another dead heat poll in the Senate race with the balance held by 10 to 15 percent of voters. Which sounds about right, but ominous nonetheless for Pryor because of a demonstrated rightward tilt among self-described "independent" voters in Arkansas.